Microsoft’s new Bing Internet search engine may have exceeded the growth of its rivals in June, but it didn’t do much for the company’s overall share of the search market. Bing grew faster than Yahoo and Google during the month. But sadly for Microsoft, it lost market share.
You can’t overtake a market in a month, particularly one dominated by Google. But you can certainly chip away a small foothold. Which is what Microsoft managed to do with its new search engine, Bing, last month. According to StatCounter, Microsoft’s share of the market grew to 8.23 percent in June, up from the 7.8 percent share it held prior to Bing’s launch.
Google’s mission, to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible, has once again run afoul of the Chinese government, which has a similar goal, but would much prefer that certain information stay inaccessible. And so, on Wednesday evening, Chinese citizens found themselves once again unable to use Google, Gmail, and YouTube as their government condemned Google as a purveyor of porn.
What’s in a name? Apparently, the answer to Microsoft’s many search problems. As we previously reported, the software behemoth plans to debut its new search service at our D: All Things Digital conference later this week, and when it does it may have a new name. Reports claim that Microsoft Live Search, once known as Windows Live Search, and prior to that as MSN Search, will henceforth be known as… Bing.
Baidu’s shares have gained 72 percent this year, apparently for very good reason. The Chinese search engine is doing to Google what few others have managed to do: dominate it in search. Little wonder, then, that Baidu delivered another strong quarter this week.
With Microsoft’s February share of the search market weighing in at a paltry 8.2 percent and declining, the company is going to extraordinary lengths to reverse the public’s indifference to its search offering. It tried loyalty programs. It tried rewards programs. Now, as it prepares to rebrand its search engine under a new name–Kumo–it’s turning to a more proven method: an $80 million to $100 million advertising campaign.
Mozilla renewed its search deal with Google last August, signing a three-year contract that ends in November 2011. Good thing too; the agreement was set to expire this month and if it had, Mozilla would have been forced to look elsewhere for the bulk of its income.
Google’s new Chrome browser hasn’t been available for a week yet and already, privacy advocates are sounding alarms. Over the weekend, Germany’s Federal Office for Information Security warned against using the browser, which it fears collects and centralizes a bit too much user data with Google.
If your mission is to beat Google in the search market, it’s probably wise to give your upstart search engine a name that people know how to pronounce. It’s also wise to make sure that it appears in the first page of search results for its own name. Cuil, the upstart search engine that debuted today with aspirations of unseating Google, has apparently done neither.
John Paczkowski has been poking fun at the tech industry and the personalities that drive it since 1997. From 1999 to 2007, he wrote the award-winning tech news Web log Good Morning Silicon Valley for the San Jose Mercury News, Silicon Valley's daily newspaper. Read more »
Here is a statement of my ethics and coverage policies. It is more than most of you want to know, but, in the age of suspicion of the media, I am laying it all out.
Best use of the Beeker “meee” ever.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist’s horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph.
12:58 AM: Breakfast: Two schools of fish from Tokyo Bay. Calories: 782,000. How I was feeling when I ate this: confused, irradiated, hating my size.
11:37 AM: Exercise: “Taxi Stomp” (alternating legs, for 30 blocks). Calories burned: 148,900,183.
1983. The Beatles announce their first tour in thirteen years, but likewise announce that Michael Jackson will be going on tour with them as a one gigantic mega-concert event.
Best video mashup ever.
A Facebook Memorial
Wow.
Worth it for the Rickrolling photo alone.
Excellent.
Flughumor!
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